TORONTO — A new study suggests that untreated depression could lead to brain inflammation. <br />Researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health discovered people with untreated depression for more than a decade had more brain inflammation than those who had untreated depression for a shorter period, Science Alert reported. <br />The study was published on Feb. 26 in The Lancet Psychiatry. <br />The study looked at 80 participants: 25 people with untreated depression for more than 10 years, 25 people with untreated depression for less than 10 years, and 30 people as a control group without depression. <br /><br />Using positron emission tomography or PET brain imaging, the team looked for translocator proteins, an inflammation marker produced by the body's microglia — central nervous system immune cells. <br /><br />Scientists found people suffering from longer terms of untreated depression had 30 percent higher levels of the translocator protein. <br /><br />Long-term depression sufferers also had higher levels of inflammation compared with the control group. <br /><br />The next step will be to collect more data, but researchers hope this will lead to new approaches in how depression is treated, specifically medications that target inflammation.
